After Midnight (19 page)

“I’m trembling.”

“You oughta be! We’ll be next.”

“Huh?”

“He’s got a body in the tent with him. Some dead woman. He
eats
her.”

“What?”

“He eats a dead woman in his tent!”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

But I didn’t have time to give it much thought, because I heard the tent flaps whap open behind me.

Letting go of Judy, I spun around. The weight of the pistol slapped my left thigh. A good thing, since it reminded me that I had it in the wrong pocket.

I went for it left-handed as this
guy
crawled out of the tent.

In spite of Judy’s description, I still expected him to be my prowler.

But he wasn’t.

My prowler was sleek and handsome.

Not a fat, bald, drooling slob.

He really
was
drooling, too. Slobbering all over the place as he struggled to his feet.

Grunting.

Naked.

Filthy with old blood that looked brown and crusty.

Coated with curly, filthy hair all the way down from his shoulders to his feet.

Only one part wasn’t hairy. It jutted out in front of him, so big he was getting drool on it.

He lumbered toward me, hunched over, his arms outspread as if he wanted to give me a bear hug. But he had a knife in one hand, a hatchet in the other.

No kidding.

They didn’t look any too clean, either.

He grunted and laughed as he picked up some speed and charged at me.

You’ve gotta be kidding!

I had this urge to laugh. But what came out was a scream. Behind me, Judy screamed, too.

This might’ve been hilarious in a movie.

I mean, the guy was such a monstrosity! It crossed my mind that all this was some sort of a gag. But I figured it must be real.

I forced my eyes away from him just long enough to glimpse a shadowy body inside his tent. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a woman. And it looked dead, to me.

I started firing.

Better late than never. The deal is, I’d had a little trouble with the pistol. I began to go for it when the guy first came crawling out of the tent. But it was down at the bottom of my pocket, and I had to drag it out with my left hand. I’m a righty. So after I got the pistol out, I spent a few moments switching it to my right hand. Only after that did I start pumping bullets into him.

I pulled the trigger fast.

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

But he didn’t go down.

He was backlit by the fire, so I couldn’t see where I was hitting him. I
had
to be hitting him, though. I’m an okay shot and this was close range and he was a large target charging straight at me. How could I miss a thing like that?

I couldn’t, that’s how.

I was hitting him, all right. But the little .22s weren’t doing the job.

In another second, he’d be on me. I had Judy at my back, so I dodged sideways, holding fire. He tried to follow me, but he was too big and clumsy. He couldn’t change course in time.

Judy kicked out at him. She was probably trying for his nuts. I heard the
smack
sound of her bare foot meeting his skin, but he didn’t cry out or drop.

He plowed into her.

His body slammed against Judy and crashed through her, knocking a grunt out of her as he sent her flying backward and upward, twisting at the end of her rope. Stumbling past where she’d been, he managed to turn around and start coming after me again.

Judy came swinging toward his back like Tarzan on the attack. But I don’t think she meant to do it. She was at the mercy of the rope and the whims of motion.

She meant what came next, though.

As the guy staggered toward me, Judy raised a slim bare leg and kicked him in the back of his head. She rebounded away from him, spinning wildly.

He grunted, stumbled forward and fell to his knees.

I ran up to him, fired a shot into the top of his shiny head, then pranced backward out of reach, not sure what to expect.

What I
hoped
was that he’d drop like a sledge-hammered bull.

But instead, he squealed and started crawling forward, trying to get up.

I glanced at the pistol. If I’d been out of ammo, the slide would’ve been locked back. It was forward. Which meant I had at least one more round.

There might be a couple, but I could only count on one.

So I wasn’t eager to use it.

As he stumbled to his feet, I hurried around behind the campfire. He lurched toward me, hunched over, arms out like before as if he wanted to give me a big, friendly hug. He still had the knife in one hand and the hatchet in the other.

By now, he had a face of blood from my shot to his head. The rest of his body was a mess, too. A worse mess than before. Now, it wasn’t just the woman’s old, dry blood. It was
his
blood, too, and plenty of it. It was pouring out of four or five holes in his chest and belly.

Have you ever seen those cartoons where a character gets all shot up, then drinks a glass of water and suddenly he’s squirting out of every hole?

It was like that.

Except these holes weren’t really squirting. They were flowing like garden hoses when the water is just barely turned on.

A guy shot up like that shouldn’t have still been coming at me. And he certainly shouldn’t still have a hard-on. What kind of a freak
was
he?

“You’re dead!” I shouted as he lumbered closer. “Fall down, you motherfucking idiot! Don’t you know when you’re dead?”

He raised his head slowly and grinned at me.

What a nice thing. What lovely teeth. Brown and crooked. Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks, but I thought I could see shreds of flesh caught between some of them.

I gagged.

He stopped just on the other side of the fire. Still grinning, he drew back his right arm. He was getting ready to throw the hatchet at me.

I stuck my own right arm straight out over the fire, shouted, “Eat this!” and fired.

Instead of going into his open mouth the way I wanted, my bullet slashed his right cheek open and punched a hole through his earlobe.

My slide locked back.

I gasped, “Shit!”

He hurled the hatchet. It flew at me over the fire, tumbling, coming straight for my face.

I dodged it. The damn thing came so close that I felt a gust of air against my left cheek. And I’d lurched sideways too fast. I stumbled, trying to stay on my feet. Then I fell.

The bastard cried out, “Ah-
ha!
”

He thought he had me.

As he staggered his way around the fire, I rolled over, got to my hands and knees, and tried to scurry up. My feet slipped on the dewy grass. I fell and banged my knees, and he gained on me.

“Get
away
from me!” I yelled.

He grunted and kept coming.

He was almost on me by the time I made it up and launched myself out of reach.

“Thata girl!” Judy cried out.

Cheering me on from the sidelines.

“Get his ax!” she yelled.

I’d already thought of that.

I’d already spotted it, too. The hatchet lay flat on the ground about fifteen feet beyond where I’d been standing before my fall.

I could get to it, but I needed a lead. I’d have to swoop down and snatch it up. Without a good lead, he might end up on my back.

“Die, you bastard!” I yelled as I ran.

He giggled.
Giggled!
Do you believe it?

Maybe he had a right to giggle. He’d taken all the bullets I could throw at him. Now, he was only a few strides behind me. He’d be on top of me if I slowed down to pick up the hatchet. And he’d probably plunge his knife into my back.

So I didn’t slow down, I dived. Slamming the dewy grass, I slid on my chest and belly, my arms reaching out ahead of me. In mid-slide, I grabbed the hatchet with my right hand. As I skidded to a stop, I flipped onto my back.

Grinning, the big boy sank to his knees in the grass just beyond my feet.

He clamped the knife between his teeth, then leaned forward and clutched my ankles. Grunting, he jerked them apart. He started pulling me toward him.

I don’t know what the hell he thought he was doing.

Well, maybe he wanted to pull me closer in order to work some sort of mischief on me. If you can call rape and murder mischief, which I’m not sure would be proper.

Anyway, he obviously wasn’t thinking straight.

How
could
he, with all those bullets in him?

I slid toward him on the seat of my cut-offs. He kept forcing my legs farther apart as if he wanted to dive between them. Judy dangled in silence from her limb.

When he dragged me close enough, I raised the hatchet high and swung it down with all my might. It got him in the back of the head.

WHUNK!

Chopped him deep, the hatchet busting through his skull and into the mush underneath. Blood and stuff flew up, glistening in the firelight.

He grunted.

He farted.

Then he plunged forward.

Like he had it all planned to land on top of me and pin me down, crush me, suffocate me, kill me with his corpse.

I jerked the hatchet, trying to turn him away. With a slurp, it jumped out of his head and I was left holding it. Before I could scoot out of the way, he bumped me in the stomach. Then his head slid lower as if he wanted to shove it down the front of my cut-offs. It was too big to fit in, though. So it stayed outside. The next thing I knew, it was shoving at my crotch. As he kept on falling, his head acted like a plow and pushed me ahead of him.

By the time he’d finished, I was in the clear.

23
SURVIVOR

Utterly worn out, I lay on my back and figured I might stay that way for an hour or two. But the top of the guy’s head was jammed between my legs, big and leaking blood through my cut-offs and making me all sticky down there.

So I squirmed to get away from it.

When nothing of me was touching him anymore, I sprawled and shut my eyes and took deep breaths.

Vaguely, I knew that I had to get up. A lot needed to be done. But I had no interest in moving.

“Alice!” Judy called.

“Yeah?” I answered, not even bothering to lift my head.

“Are you okay?”

“I guess.”

“Is he dead?”

“Pretty sure.”

“That’s great. You really did great. You saved our lives.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you come over here and cut me down?”

I didn’t answer, just sighed and stayed on my back.

After a minute or two, Judy said, “Please?”

“What’s your hurry?” I called to her.

“This isn’t very comfortable.”

No kidding, I thought.

Even though the ground felt good under my back, I wasn’t very comfortable, either. I ached just about everywhere. I was sweaty and itchy. And I didn’t like how my cut-offs were soaked with the dead guy’s blood. I needed a bath and a bed.

“Alice?”

“Yeah?”

“Come on, okay? Please?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.” I picked up the hatchet, got to my feet, and stood over the body. It wasn’t a pretty sight, I can tell you that. You should’ve seen the butt on this guy. It would’ve ruined your appetite for a week.

Anyway, I thought about going for his knife. It had fallen out of his mouth when I chopped him. It was probably on the ground underneath him, somewhere in the region of his waist.

Only one problem about getting it.

I didn’t want to touch him.

“What’re you doing?” Judy asked.

“Nothing.”

I’d managed to keep Tony’s loafers on, so I sat down on the grass near the side of Fatso the Friendly Corpse. Drawing in my legs, I swiveled around so my feet were aimed his way. Then I leaned back, braced myself up with my arms, placed the bottoms of my shoes against his hip and buttock, and
punched out
.

His body lurched and shook, but didn’t go much of anyplace. So I kept ramming it with both feet, shoving it and kicking it until finally he rolled onto his side as if he wanted to take a look at this gal who was making his life so difficult.

The knife was a little lower than where I’d expected to find it. Good thing I hadn’t tried to grab it by reaching under him. I might’ve gotten a handful of something that wasn’t a knife.

Anyway, I picked it up.

The fire had dwindled quite a bit, by then. On my way over to it, I found the .22 on the ground. I couldn’t remember dropping it, but there it was. When I put the pistol into the right rear pocket of my cut-offs, I noticed that I’d lost the rock I’d tucked back there.

I kept losing stuff.

It was turning into a trend.

Near the campfire, I set down the hatchet and knife on one of the larger rocks. Then I went to the small pile of firewood and started adding pieces to the flames. Soon, a pretty good blaze was going.

I emptied my pockets to find out what I still had.

The pistol. Two red bandanas and one white handkerchief. Judy’s keys, Tony’s keys, my keys. And Tony’s wallet.

Inspiration striking me, I dropped Tony’s wallet and keys into the fire.

“What’re you doing?” Judy asked.

“A little house-cleaning.”

I put everything else back into my pockets. Down in the fire, flames wrapped the black leather wallet and key case.

So much for my fingerprints
.

I realized, of course, that the keys wouldn’t burn. I’m not stupid. Maybe some of the things in Tony’s wallet would survive the fire, too. But that was fine. His stuff, being found here in the campsite with everything else, would probably make the cops think Tony was just another victim of Fatso.

I stood there, added more wood, and even turned the wallet over with a stick to make sure it was burning okay.

Then I retrieved the knife and hatchet. I dropped the hatchet into the fire, but kept the knife. After watching for a while to make sure the handle was catching fire, I started toward the tent.

But changed my mind. For one thing, I’d seen more than enough nasty stuff for one night. The remains of Fatso’s last victim, last lover, last meal—whatever—were in there. I didn’t need to see her close up and personal.